TypeScript 2.5

Optional catch clause variables

Thanks to work done by @tinganho, TypeScript 2.5 implements a new ECMAScript feature that allows users to omit the variable in catch clauses. For example, when using JSON.parse you may need to wrap calls to the function with a try/catch, but you may not end up using the SyntaxError that gets thrown when input is erroneous.

  1. ts
    let input = "...";
    try {
      JSON.parse(input);
    } catch {
      // ^ Notice that our `catch` clause doesn't declare a variable.
      console.log("Invalid JSON given\n\n" + input);
    }

Type assertion/cast syntax in checkJs/@ts-check mode

TypeScript 2.5 introduces the ability to assert the type of expressions when using plain JavaScript in your projects. The syntax is an /** @type {...} */ annotation comment followed by a parenthesized expression whose type needs to be re-evaluated. For example:

  1. ts
    var x = /** @type {SomeType} */ AnyParenthesizedExpression;

Deduplicated and redirected packages

When importing using the Node module resolution strategy in TypeScript 2.5, the compiler will now check whether files originate from “identical” packages. If a file originates from a package with a package.json containing the same name and version fields as a previously encountered package, then TypeScript will redirect itself to the top-most package. This helps resolve problems where two packages might contain identical declarations of classes, but which contain private members that cause them to be structurally incompatible.

As a nice bonus, this can also reduce the memory and runtime footprint of the compiler and language service by avoiding loading .d.ts files from duplicate packages.

TypeScript 2.5 brings the preserveSymlinks flag, which parallels the behavior of the --preserve-symlinks flag in Node.js. This flag also exhibits the opposite behavior to Webpack’s resolve.symlinks option (i.e. setting TypeScript’s preserveSymlinks to true parallels setting Webpack’s resolve.symlinks to false, and vice-versa).

In this mode, references to modules and packages (e.g. imports and /// <reference type="..." /> directives) are all resolved relative to the location of the symbolic link file, rather than relative to the path that the symbolic link resolves to. For a more concrete example, we’ll defer to the documentation on the Node.js website.